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Disguise Quotes

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Disguise Quotes

“Some of the best things that have ever happened to us wouldn’t have happened to us, if it weren’t for some of the worst things that have ever happened to us.”

“Not wanting the girls to endure the shame of a crazy mother, I spent my days acting as normal as possible. I walked through life, an actor in a Leave it to Beaver episode, determined to disguise all clues of my real condition until... well, until I could find an appropriate moment to do away with myself." [...] "Yet even as my depression spiraled into ever more precarious territory, I retained an uncanny ability to disguise my true mental condition from everyone except Tom. He was my sole source of strength and he never stopped encouraging me.”

“If she knew me as I really am she would despise me, and certainly not aid or abet my evil designs. To veil their vices from the sight of the good is the only resource of those who are not blind and know themselves to be vicious.' Thus was I confirmed in habits of hypocrisy; and these, for a time, worked only too effectually to my advantage.”

“If you changed into a different style of clothes, and put on a hat and glasses, I might not recognize you. But no matter what I wear, my ducks always know who I am. Am I just a guy worth knowing, or do ducks just have superior intellects?”

“the more I impersonated Cristóbal, the more it affected my psyche. I almost took offense at Angélica’s comment; the way she trivialized men and bundled them all together as if they were one entity. Living as a man was having strange effects on me. For one, it was forcing me to see them as individuals. Cristóbal and Martin, for example, were different in so many ways I could no longer subscribe to the “all men are the same” mentality.”

“[I]t is easy to confuse European interest in preserving life to prevent economic loss with positive concern for the captives’ human welfare. But to interpret the regime of the slave ship in that way is to be duped by the slave traders’ rhetoric—a language of concealment that allowed European slaving concerns to portray themselves as passive and powerless before the array of forces (including the agency of the captives themselves) outside their control. Slave merchants and their backers disguised from themselves the ugly truth that the Atlantic regime of commodification took captives from fully realized humanity and suspended them in a purgatory in between tenuous life and dishonorable death.”

“Little Maiden Encounters Fear Deepest regions walked she there little maiden sweet and fair ventured far from the path never a whisper never a laugh...”

“I try not to look obvious as I wait for Mom’s answer. I feel as if I am on the edge of a knife, my feet being sliced by the blade, teetering toward one side or the other. “Oh, of course!” Mom exclaims, her voice trilling with laughter. “How could I have forgotten?” And now I know. Really know. This woman is not my mother. I don’t know who she is, but I know absolutely who she is not.”

“how easily a man who has never been in any great distress, may pass through life without knowing, in his own person at least, anything of the possible goodness of the human heart - or, as I must add with a sigh, of its possible vileness. So a thick curtain of manners is drawn over the features and expression of men's natures, that to the ordinary observer, the two extremities, and the infinite field of varieties which lie between them, are all confounded - the vast and multitudinous line of differences expressed in the gamut or alphabet of elementary sounds.”

“Miss Foxe's other passion was fairy tales. She loved the transformations in them. Everybody was in disguise, or on their way to becoming something else. And all was overcome by order in the end. Love could not prevail if the order of the tale didn't wish it, and neither could hatred, nor grief, nor cunning. If you were the first of three siblings, then you were going to make a big mistake, and that was that. If you were the third sibling, you couldn't fail.”

“You guys know each other?” I held my breath, my chest tight. Could this be it? Cover blown so fast? Ted stared at me. After several moments he said, “Yeah.” Ah, crap. He breathed out a heavy sigh. “We dated for a short time. It, uh, didn’t end well.” "Didn’t end well?” Bill snorted. “You two went out in a hail of bullets.”

“Dissimulation is not fraud. It is an effort not to show things as they are. And it is a difficult effort: when we excel, others must not recognize our excellence. If someone were to become famous for his ability to disguise himself, as actors do, all would know that he is what he pretends to be. But concerning the true, excellent dissimulators, who have existed and exist still, we have no information.”

“Our friend Tuesday," said the President in a deep voice at once of quietude and volume, "our friend Tuesday doesn't seem to grasp the idea. He dresses up like a gentleman, but he seems to be too great a soul to behave like one. He insists on the ways of the stage conspirator. Now if a gentleman goes about London in a top hat and a frock-coat, no one need know that he is an anarchist. But if a gentleman puts on a top hat and a frock-coat, and then goes about on his hands and knees — well, he may attract attention. That's what Brother Gogol does. He goes about on his hands and knees with such inexhaustible diplomacy, that by this time he finds it quite difficult to walk upright." "I am not good at goncealment," said Gogol sulkily, with a thick foreign accent; "I am not ashamed of the cause." "Yes you are, my boy, and so is the cause of you," said the President good-naturedly. "You hide as much as anybody; but you can't do it, you see, you're such an ass! You try to combine two inconsistent methods. When a householder finds a man under his bed, he will probably pause to note the circumstance. But if he finds a man under his bed in a top hat, you will agree with me, my dear Tuesday, that he is not likely ever to forget it. Now when you were found under Admiral Biffin's bed—" "I am not good at deception," said Tuesday gloomily, flushing. "Right, my boy, right," said the President with a ponderous heartiness, "you aren't good at anything.”

“Some time ago N went over to Paris disguised as an opera singer, and he looked the part so well that the agent whom he was to meet thought he really was an opera singer and never went near him for a week. In fact, it turned out a little awkwardly, because one evening this agent saw a member of the French Cabinet dining at the Ritz and he looked so much like somebody disguised as an opera singer that this dam' fool of an agent went up and spoke to him. He was at once arrested by the French secret police, and there was nearly a most unpleasant scandal.”